WORKSHOP: Masterclass with Andrea Kapos & Project Feedback

Today we had a masterclass with Andrea Kapos, who is a Freelance Director who works predominately in Advertising. She also works as Director for 'Dark Energy Films' which is a commercial production company. During the lecture with her, she gave us insight into her personal experience of working in the Television Industry as a Director in particular. In working in advertising, she generally works with real people rather than actors and shoots interviews or montage sequences for companies like Tesco or children's television channel 'CBeebies'. However, this niche is very specific. This was very interesting as she talked about her experiences working with children, in relation to the challenges this can pose. For example, she told us that it can often be challenging to get the children engaged in the filming, and to combat this she makes sure she is always asking them questions and approaching them in a friendly, calm manner rather than making them feel as if they must perform to the camera. For her work, this is very important as she wants to get real reactions and responses from them as we are seeing them play themselves so it must come across as natural as if the camera wasn't there at all.

Dark Energy Films

As a Director, being able to communicate well with Contributors is very important as they need to understand what they should be doing and should feel guided and comfortable throughout. For Andrea, communication is incredibly important when working with children because she has to give them support throughout otherwise they are likely to get upset and not want to contribute.

Andrea also talked about her relationship with a freelance Cinematographer who she often works with on projects. Talking about how important it is to have a good understanding of what she wants to achieve visually and communicating this well to a Camera Operator, which Andrea said is key to achieving the best results. She also said that her and her Camera Operator have an understanding where he is able to shoot something without her say so if he thinks that it has potential to work for the production. For example when working with children in a real setting they're unlikely to switch off when the Director says 'Cut'. Therefore, if he sees something with potential, he will capture it.

I found the masterclass with Andrea very informative, and learnt lots of tips and advice for working freelance or just generally in the Television industry.
For the second part of the masterclass we were given an opportunity to have a tutorial with Andrea and communicate our ideas for this project to her to gain some constructive feedback. I found this to be a very useful process as she gave me some references to look at for inspiration. Andrea told me she found the premise of the idea very interesting and creative, with plenty of room for exploration. This filled me with confidence as I have found the early stages of development very challenging thus far and was unsure about some elements in my story. I also felt like I had hit a bit of a brick wall with it and felt as though I wasn't being creative enough. However, Andrea reassured me that I was making some innovative decisions.
She also advised me in terms of where to take my story and how best to structure it, suggesting that I change the way in which the child is abducted to make it more realistic and iron out any holes in the plot.
We also spoke about potential casting options and she gave me some suggestions for some of the characters that I have looked into. Generally, I found her feedback very inspiring and think that I can apply her advice and make some positive changes to this project